12.2019 | THE SCIENTIST 41In 2018, Philipp Kukura at the University
of Oxford and his colleagues announced a
technology they had developed, called mass
photometry, that measures the weight of
single molecules by the way they scatter
light. The approach offered an entirely novel
way to analyze biomolecules, with a few key
advantages. Instead of moving samples into
a vacuum as native mass spectrometry
requires, mass photometry allows them
to stay in their buffer solution. And unlike
chromatography, which requires rather
large sample volumes, mass photometry
can read just a few microliters of a nano-
molar concentration solution. To top it all
off, the processing time is about a minute
or two, compared to an hour or so for
chromatography.
In short order, the University of Oxford
spun out Refeyn to commercialize mass
photometry, and its Refeyn OneMP instru-
ments went on the market in March of
2019, starting at roughly $150,000. Mat-thias Langhorst, the chief marketing officer
of the company, says applications for the
tool range from simple tests of purity—the
number of mass peaks will indicate how
many types of protein are in a sample, for
example—to more sophisticated analyses
of how biomolecule assemblies behave
under different conditions.
Thomas Schwartz, who studies the cell’s
nuclear pore complex at MIT, was an early
tester of the device, reaching out to Kukura
as soon as he heard about mass photometry.
“The most valuable thing with this instru-
ment is that we can look at complex
proteins-macromolecular complexes andfigure out what are the components in that
mixture, and do we detect any issue with sta-
bility,” he says. “It’s a very time-consuming
process in typical workflow.”WILEY: “The principles are not new, but
the implementation in this new device is quite
clever and powerful because it can measure
every particle in a field. Ver y powerful and
potentially revolutionary instrument.”O
n the winding road to successful innovation, there
are many diversions and dead ends. But compa-
nies and independent researchers consistently
navigate those pitfalls, developing products that
have the potential not just to revolutionize the creation of
new drugs or to ease the work of life scientists in the lab, but
to offer a clearer picture of how biology works. This year’s
To p 10 Innovations, which come from companies both large
and small, include an instrument that uses a new technol-
ogy called mass photometry to simultaneously analyze several
biomolecules within a cell and a novel system that improves
multiplexed antibody detection.You’ll notice familiar names—such as Pacific Biosciences, Hori-
zon Discovery, and 10x Genomics—among our 2019 winners, as
instrument makers continue to advance their platforms and pro-
tocols to better meet the needs of biologists. New players also made
the cut this year. Companies including Owlstone Medical and
Berkeley Lights appear in our To p 10 Innovations list for the first
time with products that wowed The Scientist’s independent panel
of judges with their potential to enable new discoveries.
This year has proven to be a great one for the life sciences,
and the 2010s have been an exciting decade. Here, The Scientist
presents the fine-tuned tweaks and brand-new technologies that
make up our To p 10 Innovations for 2019.Refeyn
Refeyn
One
MP